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Apr 2, 2003

Programming Teams Win Top Honors in U.S.

The Moscow Times, Larisa Naumenko

When 14-year-old Timofei Borodin started doing algorithmic programming
six years ago as an extracurricular activity in his hometown of Kostroma
in central Russia, he had no idea how far the hobby would take him.

Last week Borodin became one of six Russian students to win gold medals
at the Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate
Programming Contest in Beverly Hills, California.

Borodin's gold medal means even more to Russia's information technology
community, which sees the winners as a new generation of programmers for
the country's still-rudimentary industry.

"It shows the strengths of the Russian system of higher education and
proves that the Russian IT talent is the best in the world." said Alexis
Sukharev, president of the Auriga software company.

Two teams, Moscow State University and St. Petersburg's Institute of
Fine Mechanics and Optics, took home two of the four gold medals. The
students' medals were second and third behind the Cup winner — Warsaw
University's team. Saratov State University finished seventh in the
competition and won a silver medal.

"These two gold medal teams outperformed the best of the best
university students at the world's great universities by working harder,
preparing better and delivering more solutions under pressure," said
William Poucher, 1CPC executive director. 'They set the standards for
their peers worldwide at unprecedented levels."

The winners and their mentors attribute their success to Russia's
system of science education - an inheritance from the lime of the Soviet
Union, when mathematics and physics were some of the most popular majors
at colleges and universities.

It took a few years of training to get the teams ready to win, said
Sergei Chernyshov, a 23-year-old graduate student at Moscow State
University, who founded and now coaches one ol the gold medal winners —
MGU's Yarik team of Pyotr Mitrichev,18, Yevgeny Chcrepanov, 21 .and Maxim
Babenko, 21. Chernyshov participated in the contest a few years before as
a member of Yarik.

"There's a strong tradition of school Olympiads in mathematics," said
Chernyshov. Since Soviet times, contests in math have allowed the best
colleges and universities to search for talented youth outside Moscow and
St. Petersburg.

The two winning teams are a good example of regional recruitment: On
the St. Petersburg team. Borodin. 20. is from Kostroma, Alexander
Shtuchkin, 19, is from Saratov and Yevgeny Yuzhakov, 20. is from
Kotlas.

On the Moscow team, only the youngest, Mitrichev, is from Moscow, "I've
been into computers since 11 or 12 years old," he said. Shy and reserved,
Mitrichev already has an impressive award history, havin» won gold and
silver medals in the programming Olympiads during his three last years of
high school. Last year, while still only in high school, his team was the
best at the Russian college-programming contest.

"We arc taught to think and to look for solutions ourselves rather than
to use methods that are already out there." Cliernysliov said.

The 70 teams in this year's competition were required to solve ten
problems in five hours. Some of the problems were to write a program on
how to determine an optimal bridge configuration, or to design a program
for a set of switches for a huge computer-operated marquee.

Warsaw's win broke Russia's streak - St. Petersburg State University
was champion two years in a row in 2000 and 2001, Borodin said
psychological readiness to participate in the contest and to face the
pressure is also very important. "This is one of the reasons we performed
better than last year, when we finished fourteenth." he said.

Borodin already works as a software programmer and sees his future in
this field.

Still, some experts like Vladimir Glebov, dean of the IT and
programming department, said they fear real talent is becoming a rarity in
Russia with less young people interested in math and other sciences, a
trend he sees increasing across the world.

"The level of education has dropped worldwide and this wave has reached
our country too," he said. "Our human resources have nearly run out."

But young Mitrichev is more optimistic than that. He needs to find two
new members for his team next year, as his current teammates will not be
eligible for future contests.